The Giants' Dance (8 page)

‘But you couldn't find it?' Morann asked.

Will shook his head. ‘Though it seemed very strong. Ludford Castle and the town itself is a maze of walls and towers. There is too much dressed stone there. My feelings were confused. It was like listening for a sound inside a cave full of echoes.'

‘Yet you were able to find the Doomstone, even though it lay under a great stone-built chapter house,' Morann said.

Gwydion spread his hands. ‘That is because the Doomstone was by then awake, in the full flood of its power and actively calling men to the fight. It is possible that some powerful hiding magic is at work at Ludford. That may be a good reason to let the battlestone lie for the meanwhile, just as we have let the Aston Oddingley stone lie.'

‘The trouble is,' Will muttered, glancing at Gwydion, ‘we can't keep deciding to let sleeping dogs lie.'

Gwydion nodded at the hidden accusation. ‘What Willand wants to know is why I seem to have done nothing to unearth the battlestones in the intervening years. I will tell him, for what youthful impatience sees as idleness may now appear otherwise. When the battle at Verlamion was halted I believed that the breaking of the Doomstone had likely solved the problem of the lorc. The Black Book predicts that Arthur's third coming signals the end of the fifth Age – therefore we know that it must end within Will's lifetime. When he cracked the Doomstone and I banished Maskull into the Realm Below there seemed little likelihood of trouble arising again before the current Age drew to a close, and so I went about on other errands, in Albanay and elsewhere. It has turned out that my optimism was
misplaced. I might have known it would be, for the end of each Age is a strange time and in the last days odd things do happen. But if optimism is one of my failings, I have at least learned not to put all my eggs in the same basket. It could be that neither Maskull nor the lorc were wholly settled – and so I kept Will safe in the Vale against the possibility of rainier days.'

Morann nodded. ‘He dared not risk squandering you, for you are the only way he has of finding the stones.'

Will compressed his lips. ‘You make it seem as if my life is hardly my own.'

Gwydion's face was never more serious. ‘It has never been that, Willand.'

They lapsed into a gloomy silence, but then the wizard strove to lift their spirits. ‘My friends, let me speak rather of what lies within the hearts of brave men. I should tell you that the true tally of stones is more encouraging than you presently imagine, for my efforts during the past four years have not been entirely without fruit. I returned to the cave of Anstin the Hermit, and now a second stone is undone.'

‘You mean you succeeded in draining the Plaguestone?' Will said, sitting up in amazement.

The wizard set a taper to a candle and brought a rich golden light to the gloom. ‘It was a far from simple task. My plan was to take the Plaguestone across to the Blessed Isle, but I could find no safe way to sail an undrained battlestone, even one of the lesser sort, over the seas. I could not hazard the lives of a ship's crew. Nor could I allow the stone to sink itself into the Deeps, for even the lesser stones will blight whatever they can, and many a ship would be wrecked by such a hazard forever afterwards.'

‘So what did you do?' Will asked.

‘Anstin the Hermit agreed to aid me, and in the end he paid dearly for his decision.' Gwydion's face set in sadness
once more. ‘I was much troubled, for when I reached Anstin's cave he told me the battlestone had been struggling against the bondage into which I had placed it. He said he feared that soon the harm would succeed against the spells that contained it. Every month it would writhe and spit at the eye of the full moon. Anstin was a man of true worth who came to know the nature of the stone very well. Great valour lived in his heart. In his younger days he was a lad with a good head for heights and for this one reason he was sent into a trade that did not sit well with his spirit. Even so, his hands proved to be talented. They were taught to work stone, and he decorated many of the high spires that sit atop the chapter houses and cloisters of the Sightless Ones. But in time his spirit cried against such work, and the feeling withdrew from his fingers. When the Sightless Ones learned of his plight they pressed upon him admission to their Fellowship, and when he refused them they said he had deliberately dropped a hammer, meaning for it to fall onto the head of an Elder. He repeatedly swore his innocence until they saw that he would not be moved. Then they drove him off, saying they would have nothing more to do with a man who was touched by obstinate evil. When I came upon him in Trinovant he was a lonely leper whose flesh was rotting on the living bone. I took him to dwell in a cave, away from all others, and there he was cared for by a Sister who brought him bread, but whom he would not suffer to see him, so ugly did he imagine he had become.'

Will said, ‘I remember a rede you once told me: “Delicious fruit most often has a spotted rind.”'

‘And so it does. Anstin the Hermit was never ugly to my eye, but he yearned only for death when I first came upon him. I could not heal his flesh, for the damage had come of a deep contention within his heart, but I could and did reveal to him the true length of his lifespan. This
he asked of me, for he said he wanted to know how much more suffering he must endure.'

‘You actually told him the day on which he would die?' Will asked.

‘That is not something to be undertaken lightly,' Morann said.

Gwydion's face betrayed no regret. ‘I told him he was fated to die a hero. Only when he knew the true date of his death was I able to arrest his illness and thereby win for him a space of time to make a proper peace with the world. For this he was grateful, and when I brought the Plaguestone to him he was quite pleased to take it.'

Will thought back to the time when they had delivered the Plaguestone. He had waited outside Anstin's cave, imagining what was going on inside. He wondered if Gwydion had also foretold the manner of Anstin's death.

The wizard went on. ‘Anstin understood very well the dangers the Plaguestone posed, but as ever he had a wry answer at the ready. “There can be no danger to a man who is already composed for the grave,” said he. And I replied that, in truth, there was no gainsaying him. Therefore, this man whose fingers once knew stone so well kept the Plaguestone for thirteen seasons of the year under close watch and ward. At all times he lived in its presence. Fearlessly and with great strength he repulsed its struggles to ensnare him. When I returned to him just before the end he told me movingly of the continuing misery of his life, how he wished to pledge his last day to my cause if I should choose to attempt a draining of the Plaguestone. Hearing this bravery, how could I have done other than agree?'

Gwydion stirred and the living flame of the candle shivered. ‘I will not tell in detail what happened that night in the cave of Anstin the Hermit. Suffice to say that there are few horrors that were not visited against his mind and body as the black breath of the stone was slowly drawn. I had
learned much from my earlier mistakes, but even so the drawing out of the Plaguestone did not go well. The Black Book said the Plaguestone was far less powerful than the Doomstone, yet it was all I could do to drain it. Poor Anstin died when a cloud that had issued from the stone enveloped his body. He alone soaked up the harm, yet until the moment he was burst asunder he laughed at death and showed more courage than all the knights of this Realm might hope to muster. Such is the power of what lies within.'

Will clasped his hands in respect. He tried to dispel the images that swarmed in his mind, but it was difficult, for he himself had been under attack from a battlestone and his memory of the agony was sharp. Never before had he heard Gwydion speak with such a power of sadness in his voice. But the wizard was not yet done, and strength gathered in his words again. ‘Friends, my decision to try to drain the Plaguestone was not taken lightly. There is a very deep rede of magic that says: “There is no good and no evil in the world, except that which is made by the wilful action of people.” Yet all things are but vessels in which two contrary kinds of spirit are equally mixed. Some call these spirits “bliss” and “bale”, the one having the power to drive kindness and the other the power to drive harm. Men, by their choices, liberate both into the world just by moving through it. We upset the balance whatever we do, unwittingly and without malice, sometimes through our failings, sometimes even when we strive to do what is best. But those imbalances are mostly small, and it is only when malice aforethought is involved that the balance is more widely upset, for then the malicious man acts as a sieve. He strains out the bliss from all that he touches, and so he gathers harm about him in ever greater concentration.'

‘But how are kindness and harm different from what the Sightless Ones preach about good and evil?' Will asked. ‘Aren't you just using different names for the same things?'

‘Do not think that! Words are important. Dogs are not cats, which is why we trouble to call them by different names.'

‘But surely good and kindness are the same, aren't they?'

‘If you mean kindness, then you must say kindness. Good and evil are notions invented by the Fellowship for their own purposes, and the difference is this: the Sightless Ones say there are conscious sources of good and evil. They say that both good and evil are active in the world, driven by intent; one is sent to scourge us, and the other to save us. The Sightless Ones would have us believe that invisible monsters of great power use us as their playthings. This is quite different from the magical understanding of the spirits of kindness and harm which lie latent and in balance and scattered throughout all things.'

Will shook his head. ‘I still don't understand.'

‘The idea of good fighting to survive evil is a very dangerous one. It represents the second greatest tool of the Fellowship, and is something that softens and warps the minds of any who allow themselves to see the world in those terms.'

‘The second greatest?' Will raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean there's a worse one?'

‘Much worse. Long ago the Sightless Ones harnessed an even more dangerous idea, one that came from the Tortured Lands of the east. It is an idea that makes folk into willing slaves once it is planted in their heads.'

‘A simple
idea
can do that?'

‘Do you doubt it?'

‘But what can it be?'

‘I dare not tell you for, though it is lethal, it also has great appeal. It might seize you and destroy you, and do so seemingly within the bounds of your own free will.'

‘Gwydion, I am no longer a child. I have a child of my own.'

‘Then I will tell you, but…are you sure you are ready to hear it?'

He thought about that for a moment then shook his head. ‘No, I'm not sure. How could I be? Maybe I'm just letting idle curiosity get the better of me.'

‘Ah, now that is a mature response. Then I can at least refresh your memory on the matter: the idea is called the Great Lie. The Sightless Ones have used it ruthlessly to bend the common people to their will, for once brought to a false belief they are easily persuaded into other lies. They become obedient and willingly swap their lives for no more than the promise of a better one to come. Thus may a man's true fate be twisted out of his own control. Thus is a real, living person sent walking into a glittering maze of deceptions.'

Will sat back, unsure about what Gwydion was saying. He knew little enough about the Sightless Ones, except that thinking about their red, scaly hands made him itch. He wanted to ask how an idea could make a man give up his life, and what reward could possibly be offered to make him do it, but then he thought about what he had seen inside the great chapter house at Verlamion and he knew that whatever this idea was, it certainly did drive men insane.

He held up his hand, suddenly fearful. ‘I don't think I'm ready to know what the Great Lie is.'

Gwydion smiled and then said, ‘Perhaps we are straying from the true path, for the kindness and harm that exist in the battlestones are another thing entirely. What is known is this: the fae of old readied two similar stones and worked high magic upon them. They drew all the kindness they could from the first and put it into the second, while at the same time they drew almost all the harm from the second and put it into the first. Thus the sister-stone was filled twice over with unbalanced kindness, whereas the battlestone contained a double measure of almost pure harm.
The draining in which Anstin offered himself as bait was attempted to prevent a battle in which thousands would have died, but there was a second reason. We must not permit the battlestones to fall into Maskull's hands, for he will certainly misuse them if he can. My belief is that, at present, he knows less than we do about them, but he learns speedily and is ever ready to experiment in matters which he would not touch if he were wiser. I fear he may have taken the Dragon Stone. Perhaps he has even put it back into the lorc. That is why tomorrow we must go to Nadderstone and see for ourselves.'

In the silence that followed, Will heard the muted sound of merry revels coming from the rest of the inn. Voices were raised in laughter, a round of song and the scraping of a long-handled fiddle. Perhaps Gwydion's spell of defence against eavesdroppers had spent itself. Duffred came in to collect the trenchers and to flap the crumbs from the table. He brought a measure of brisk good cheer with him that dispelled their thoughtfulness, and when he asked if they needed their tankards refilling, they agreed that that was a very good idea.

They spoke more lightly for a while, reminiscing about this and that until at last Morann rose up. ‘I think it's time I was away to my bed.'

‘In that case, may you remember to forget only what you forget to remember,' Will told him in parting toast.